Company leader
Art Papier, MD
Co-founder and CEO
VisualDx
Art Papier is a dermatologist and the co-founder and chief executive of VisualDx, a Rochester, New York, company whose image library helps clinicians diagnose rashes and other visible conditions. Papier believes no doctor can memorize every presentation of disease, and that software should help them think through the possibilities.
Medical School in Vermont
Papier studied at Wesleyan University, took pre-med courses at Columbia University, and earned his medical degree at the University of Vermont, his VisualDx biography says. He trained in dermatology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, where he is an associate professor of dermatology and medical informatics.
Learning From Lawrence Weed
In the 1980s he worked with Lawrence Weed, the physician who created the SOAP note and argued that doctors need tools to support their memory. That idea stayed with Papier. "You can't memorize it all," he told PLOS in a 2018 interview.
He then moved to Rochester, New York, the home of Kodak, to train and teach at the University of Rochester.
A CD-ROM for Fever and Rash
Papier co-founded VisualDx in 1999. Its first product shipped on CD-ROM in March 2001 to help clinicians work up patients with fever and rash, and after September 11 the company helped the CDC, according to the company history. VisualDx moved to the iPhone in 2008, into EHRs in 2012, and into general medicine in 2016.
Building AI That Helps Doctors Think
VisualDx added an image recognition tool, DermExpert, in 2017 and a consumer app, Aysa, in 2018. Papier told PLOS that he sees machine learning as "augmenting intelligence," a method that "aids doctors to organise their thinking around possibilities."
In 2021 VisualDx launched Project IMPACT, which focused on showing disease on all skin tones, and the company says it reached 1.5 million health professionals.